


Night // Day

by Mertiya



Category: Magic: The Gathering
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/F, F/M, It is pretty nasty though, Jace has even more issues than usual, M/M, Multi, OT4, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Ral Vraska and Lavinia are the Jace Protection Squad, Rape Recovery, Rape/Non-con Elements, Sedoretu, Suicide Attempt, The rape is not very explicit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-17 22:31:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15471552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mertiya/pseuds/Mertiya
Summary: A sedoretu, a four-way marriage involving two people of Morning and two of Evening, is at its most powerful if between them, the four can channel all five colors of mana.  Many years ago, a sedoretu involving Tetsuo Umezawa, Ayesha, Kolo Meha, and Wasitora killed the elder dragon Nicol Bolas.  A long time later, an artificer named Tezzeret tried to create his own sedoretu to do the same, but it was ultimately unsuccessful.Or, Ixalan and aftermath rethought from a sedoretu perspective.





	Night // Day

**Author's Note:**

> Okay sorry this came out REALLY fuckin dark even compared to, say, AoA, so, uh, please heed the tags. Having said that, the explicit sex scenes are all consensual, thank god.
> 
> The original idea of a sedoretu is from an Ursula le Guin story called "A Fisherman of the Inland Sea." (https://fanlore.org/wiki/Sedoretu)
> 
> I've adapted it a little for the mtg universe, mainly, as noted in the summary, that not only do you need two Morning and two Evening, you also need the ability to channel all five colors of mana between the four of you.
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

            _We have to retreat!_ It was Liliana. Jace could feel the black mana pulling its way out of the already tentative web.

            _No!_ Gideon. _We can do this_.

            Jace was inclined to agree with Liliana—the other four were too untried, too unpracticed, and he was too—broken. But she couldn’t—not without the other three—

            Apparently she could. Jace felt her gathering the Eternities around her.

            _We have to retreat!_ Liliana snarled again.

            _What are you doing?_ Nissa, urgent, trying to hold the green and blue threads steady. Chandra was nothing but a wordless ball of rage. And then the Eternities opened and swallowed Liliana, along with her entire vein of black. The web began to unravel. No. _No_.

            Jace flung himself in, trying to leave behind the memories that he knew would otherwise consume him, tried to reach for rusty, half-remembered manabonds to the dirty water running beneath the Tenth. Black mana flowed across him, corrosive and all-encompassing. _Let me in!_ he said urgently.

            Nissa’s mind and Gideon’s reached for his—and then he realized his mistake, as Chandra, blazing, tried to unite her Evening with his. But he had no Evening to give. For a single moment, Jace felt it, felt the web snap taut as the black mana surged through him, and then the bright, hard light of Morning overwhelmed Chandra’s smoldering Evening.

            There was a blinding pain in his head. Nissa reached for him again, desperate, losing the ravel of the blue as Jace’s black started bleeding away. Bolas was laughing, and Jace was screaming and falling, falling, _falling_ , something hungry and distant and bright-dark warm-cold reaching out to claw him out of reality like a turtle out of the safety of its shell—

~

            “I’ve been trying to come up with a strategy against Bolas,” Gideon said, his eyes alight with determination. For some reason, Jace felt a chill crawl down his back, but he shook it off. And then it came back in full force as Gideon continued, “If it was a sedoretu that managed to kill him once—look, I know that’s asking a lot of all of you, and anyone who doesn’t want to be involved doesn’t have to be—” Which was a step up, yes, Jace agreed, but no. _No_. Never again.

            “I won’t do it,” he said, astonished that he was able to voice his stance so straightforwardly and calmly.

            “I mean, Jace, you know we’re—” Liliana started, and he whirled on her.

            “Liliana. No. _No_.”

            She gave a little laugh. “Whatever you like, Jace, of course. There’s still four of us left to make a good little sedoretu.” Her lips curved up. “I’m sure Beefslab here will be a better partner than you ever were, anyway.”

            “ _Liliana_!” Nissa, sounding scandalized, but her voice was very far away.

 _No,_ Jace tried to say, but it was too late, the past was reaching up to swallow him again, for the first time in front of the Gatewatch.

            _“Jace, are you sure about this?”_

_Jace bats Kallist’s hands away from his collar so he can undo it himself. “Of course I’m sure. It’s not a real sedoretu and besides, we won’t get caught.”_

_“You’re going to kill me,” Kallist groans, but his hands are behind Jace’s head, and they’re kissing messily, and Jace’s hand is between Kallist’s legs._

_“Is that a knife in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?” Jace grins._

_“Krokt, shut_ up _. You’re terrible.” Kallist is laughing into his mouth. “I should take the knife off, though.”_

_“Yeah, I’d rather not get stabbed. Well.” Jace pauses meditatively. “Not with an actual knife, anyway.”_

_Kallist sheds his belt along with his dagger, then backs Jace into the wall, one hand on either side of his head. “Oh, I think something else could be arranged,” he breathes._

Jace was on his knees, hands on his head. That was enough. That was far enough. He didn’t need to remember anything else, not like this, not like this punch to the face, a punch to the gut.

            “Jace, what?” He looked up, into Liliana’s face, realizing suddenly that she’d never seen… _this_. But the look of concern in her eyes, all too familiar, brought the past surging up around him again.

            _They’re in bed again, him and Kallist, Jace gasping into his pillows with Kallist behind him, when Jace hears the click of the door opening. The door he locked not an hour ago. Immediately, he rolls sideways, elbow colliding with Kallist in a soft, fleshy place. Kallist swears, loud and rough. “Jace, what are you—” Liliana. Oh, shit. Oh, shit._

_“Lili,” Jace gasps, jerking up the sheets, trying to hide the two of them. “Please. Don’t tell anyone. Don’t tell—”_

_“What is going on in here?” Baal’s thunder. Tezzeret._

            “No,” Jace whispered. “No, no, no, _no_.” He dragged his mind back into his body by main force, staring down at the sand beneath him, counting the grains, digging his nails into the palms of his hands to ground himself in the present. Kallist was dead. Kallist was dead. Kallist was _dead_.

            “I am not going to be part of a sedoretu,” he said, staring down at his feet, wondering what the Gatewatch thought of him now.

            “That’s fine,” Gideon told him. “Jace. It’s fine. It was just an idea.”

~

            There was blue all around him. He was spinning along in the middle of it, and, for a long moment, he thought he was in the Eternities still. Then he realized it wasn’t just raw mana; the mana was connected to water, foaming water. Jace’s head broke the surface long enough for him to gasp in a breath of air and catch a glimpse of a high, arched blue sky. This wasn’t Ravnica. Where…?

            _Vraska_ , a piece of his brain reminded him. _Vraska. Ixalan_.

            But even as he tried to grasp the events that had put him here, his mind slipped away into a different time entirely.

~

            “Guildpact, I’ve been trying to draw up a set of contingencies for your protection.”

            Jace, groaning, raised his head but managed a smile at Lavinia. “Don’t think I don’t appreciate it,” he said, attempting to unstick his cheek from Form 39C, on which he had taken an impromptu nap. “I’ve just been doing a little more working and a little less sleeping lately than is strictly optimal.”

            “Which is exactly why we should go over these contingencies, so we can put them in place and you can start delegating,” Lavinia told him briskly. “I do have a question, though.”

            “Yeah?”

            “Do you have any aptitude for healing magic? It might be as well to teach you some basic first aid in case of assassination attempts.”

            “Oh,” Jace said, a little blankly. “Uh. No, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

            “They are really quite simple, and I’d feel better if I thought you could—”

            Jace could feel his breathing speeding up. “No,” he said sharply. “I can’t use white mana.”

            There was a pause. “All right, Guildpact, I’ll strike that one off the list, then, shall I?”

            He owed her an explanation. He knew he did. But how could he possibly explain the way that white mana felt now? How could he explain how it—

            _splits his head open with hot radiance, with a strange overfull blocked sensation, with—“I can’t do it, I just—”_

_“You have to. Again.”_

_“I can’t draw any more mana, Tezzeret. I can’t_ hold _any more mana.”_

_“That isn’t enough to sustain the sedoretu. Draw more.”_

_“I’m telling you, it’s not possible!”_

_He’s trembling with effort just to hold this much. It hurts—it_ hurts _—he can’t—_

_“You’re the one who broke the sedoretu once,” snarls Tezzeret, and his metal hand is around Jace’s throat. “If you care about your Evening whore, then you. Will. Do. This. Or I swear to you, yours will be the last morning he ever sees.”_

_No. Kallist. Jace sobs, shuts his eyes, blocking out everything except the blinding white that he is pulling at and pulling at and whitewhiteWHITE pain, filling him, sharp like glass—_

Jace gasped and gulped, digging his fingers into his arm. Lavinia was saying his name, over and over again, low and alarmed. He forced himself to look up at her and try to smile, although the smile might have come out as more of a grimace, because Lavinia did not appear to be reassured.

            “Jace,” she said, seriously. “What was _that_?”

            His eyes slid away from her again. “Oh, um,” he mumbled. “It happens sometimes.”

            “What does?”

            “I, um…memories?” he hazarded. “Not…not great ones. I was—I was part of—part of a sedoretu, once, and it. I’m not sure. It did something to my head. I can’t really—I can only draw blue mana now, and it isn’t, um, always, um, a lot of fun.”

            “ _Krokt_ , Jace. You should have told me.”

            “I just don’t like broadcasting how fucking broken I am,” Jace snarled, then covered his mouth with his hand. Lavinia didn’t deserve that.

            She fidgeted for a moment, one hand straightening the cerulean edge of her cloak. “May I hug you?” she asked.

            Tightly, Jace nodded. “Yeah, I—thanks.”

            She stooped and gathered him up in her arms. “Jace Beleren, you are an idiot,” she told him sternly, her arms tight across his back. He could feel her Morning, bright and shining and determined, not like Baltrice’s at all. “You need to learn to ask your friends for help.”

            “What friends?” Jace asked before he could stop himself.

            “Well, like me, for example,” Lavinia told him, and he let his head drop onto her shoulder and inhaled the smell of armor polish and dry parchment. “Stop making me wear an ‘I can’t believe you think no one cares’ face, Jace. Would you like some more coffee?”

~

            He was lying half in the water now, half out of it. Mana swirled around and through him, out of his control, blue, most of it, but even that was painful. The lack of control, the blue, reminded him horribly—

            _“I should have known better than to try to create an unconsummated sedoretu.” Kallist’s been dragged away, and Jace is cowering in his bed, still naked._

_“Tezzeret,” he manages. “Tezzeret, please. Please don’t—I’ll never—I just thought—”_

_“You thought it wasn’t a_ real _sedoretu.” Tezzeret’s hand in his hair where Kallist’s was just a few minutes ago, forcing Jace’s head painfully back. “So I suppose we’d better make it a real sedoretu then, hadn’t we?” Jace’s breath rises in his throat, choking him. “Evening to your Morning, Jace,” Tezzeret snarls, his metal fingers digging in painfully._

_Jace shakes his head mutely. “Please,” he whispers. “Please don’t—” Blue. Blue wrenches his arms back, binding him down to the bed. Tezzeret looms above him._

_“Say it,” he tells Jace, voice ice-cold. “Say it, or I’ll have you rip out your lover’s mind yourself.”_

_“Morning—” Jace gulps out somehow, his voice coming from far away. “M-M-Morning to your Evening, Tezzeret.”_

            He was screaming. He was screaming and crying and swearing, because he’d done such a good job of getting rid of _this_ , this one scene, this one piece that he never wanted to think about again and it was back. Fuck. _Fuck_.

            The only thing that was different now was that instead of numbness or fear, the emotion bursting in Jace’s chest, after months sailing the high seas with Vraska, was rage. _You took my safety from me!_ his brain howled. _You took Kallist, you took—you took—_ Tezzeret had taken his ability to draw mana painlessly. Tezzeret had taken _everything_ , everything that made Jace himself, and he’d left nothing. And then he’d come _back_ , after Jace had sliced him into ribbons and thought he’d finally escaped, come back, and Jace had followed Liliana in the hopes of saving someone else from Tezzeret. And look how well that had gone. He’d spent the past months able to draw mana without pain; it had been so _easy_ , so effortless. And he could feel it slipping away, and he was so very, desperately, hopelessly angry.

            “Jace!” His head whipped up, and he was scrabbling into a wary crouch before he realized that Vraska was wading towards him. She fell to her knees beside him. “Dear Mot,” she said, and he could hear a grinding noise and feel flashes of pain from her mouth; his mind magic was still almost entirely out of his control. She was gnashing her teeth together. “Dear Mot, Jace. How _dare_ he? I want to kill him slowly.” She breathed in slowly through her nose. “I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to kill someone as badly,” she said with a twisted smile. “And that’s something of an accomplishment.”

            He started to stumble toward Vraska, and then his mind—his mana—blue surged up around him again, carrying him away with it and back towards yet another memory he didn’t want, didn’t need, didn’t—           

            _When Tezzeret is done, Liliana joins him. Jace is curled on his side, limp, because it doesn’t hurt as much that way. “I’m sorry,” Liliana tells him in a low voice. “I can’t believe he—”_

_“I shouldn’t have fucked Kallist,” Jace says dully. “It’s what a sedoretu is. It’s what a sedoretu means. I shouldn’t have—” It hurts, in a distant, remote kind of way. “I wasn’t thinking,” he finishes, which isn’t exactly true, but he hides behind the thought of his wrongdoing being thoughtless, instead of cruel._

_“It’s going to be all right, Jace. I’ll be gentle.” He doesn’t deserve her kindness. Not when he’s broken sedoretu. Even an unconsummated sedoretu. She strokes a careful hand over his face, and he winces. Tezzeret hit him, while he—and it still hurts. Might bruise. Jace hopes that Kallist is all right, that Tezzeret didn’t—_

_It’s all his fault._

            It was all his fault, and it hadn’t—even—fucking— _worked_.

            _“We can’t,” Jace objects. “A ten-thousand-year-old dragon? You’re kidding me. There’s no way—”_

_“Silence!” Jace flinches as Tezzeret slams his hand against the table, pulling his cloak more tightly around him. “If Umezawa could do it, so can we. You will keep our minds united, and you will draw the white mana we need, or—”_

_“I know, I know,” Jace mutters. “I’ve heard the threat before.”_

_“Then you would do well to take this more seriously,” Tezzeret snarls, and then Jace is being lifted off his feet, choking as the folds of his cloak constrict about his throat. “If we fail, Beleren, I will know whose fault it was—”_

_“Stop it,” Liliana says. “Tezzeret, this isn’t the way a sedoretu should function.” Jace shoots her a grateful look as he’s dumped back into his chair. Even though he knows, already, that they won’t succeed. Not when every touch of mana burns him now, when he has to fight against the pain just to open a single bond. They’ll fail, and when they do—“I’m sorry,” Jace whispers, the wheels of his mind revolving over and over again, trying to find a way out, but there isn’t one._

_When Bolas breaks the power of the sedoretu, when Jace feels his mental net unraveling, he knows it’s the end. Tezzeret will kill Kallist, and Jace can’t save him. There’s nothing more he can do for Kallist. And Tezzeret will either kill Jace, or he’ll—no. No more. No more._

_The Eternities spin out before him, and Jace lets himself fall into them, but he doesn’t bother to find a way out. In here, he’s safe until he dissipates, safe until the roiling mana simply strips him apart, strips the will from his mind, and takes him apart into his component energy. And really, that won’t be so bad, will it? Maybe…maybe it won’t. It’ll be calm, and quiet, and it won’t hurt anymore._

_He doesn’t know if he’s there for a hundred years or no time at all, stretching and wearing away, eroding like a statue in the rain beneath the bright ebb and flow of the mana around him, when he hears Liliana’s voice. Jace, she says to him. Although her voice doesn’t have words, he senses it as a twanging disturbance in the knotted concentration of black mana that he recognizes as her pattern._

_Come back with me, Jace, Liliana says._

_I’d rather not._

_I need your help. So does Kallist._

_Jace feels the flicker run through him and knows that Liliana does too. Kallist is alive?_

_I got him out. Jace, come back with me. We’ll take the Consortium from Tezzeret. It’ll be ours. But I can’t do it without you._

_Kallist is alive, Jace thinks. Then he thinks about how much everything hurts, and he almost wants to stay here and dissipate in spite of how much he owes Kallist. But, no, he can’t do that._

_All right. I’ll come back._

            So he came back. And then Kallist died anyway.

            “I can’t,” Jace sobbed. “I can’t ever—I couldn’t ever—”

            “Shhhh.” He could feel the uncertainty in Vraska’s arms around him, but despite that tension she held him tightly, safely. She’d known, all this time, she’d known, and she’d never taken advantage of what he didn’t know. It was strange how safe that made him feel. “I want to kill them,” she snarled, low and furious. “All three of them.”

            “Baltrice is dead,” someone said in Jace’s voice, distant, strange. “Liliana—” The voice wobbled. “She wasn’t so bad. She didn’t—it didn’t hurt, when she—we both knew we had to, because if we didn’t, Tezzeret—she held me, afterwards.”

            “She didn’t have to.” Vraska’s voice, still with an almost predatory edge. “She never had to; she made a choice, and her choice was to rape and abuse you rather than find another way out of the cycle of life and death.”

            He’d never thought of it like that, and it made him want to scrub his brain of the touch of black mana, too, except that he’d felt the black when Vraska drew it, and it didn’t—it didn’t hurt when she drew it. “I’d kill her,” Vraska snarled, “and Ral Zarek would help me.”

            “Ral?” Jace asked, weakly, sluggishly. The sheer number of memories that had been dumped into his brain in the last five minutes made it difficult for him to process them; they simply rose up at random intervals, unbidden. But now that Vraska said it—

~

            “I don’t know,” Jace said doubtfully. “I mean—it’s very kind of you to offer, but—I don’t really like red mana very much?”

            Ral gave him a sharp look. “You know you’re fucking brilliant, right?”

            “What? No, I’m not.”

            “You are, and I know fucking brilliant, because I am, too.” A grin that showed more teeth than Jace was used to from anyone non-draconic. “You have a _hell_ of a good grasp on manaflow equations, better than most of the guildmages I’ve seen, and you can’t have had that much training.”

            “Oh…kay?” An unusual sense of warmth fluttered up in the center of Jace’s chest. They’d been working on Lightning Bug for a few weeks now, and Jace knew praise from Ral wasn’t easy to earn. If he said it, he meant it.

            Now Ral was looking at him with his head tipped to one side, an assessing kind of look. “You got hurt, didn’t you?”

            “Oh, um.” Fire battered at the back of Jace’s mind, and he had to take a long, deep breath to keep the flames safely tamped down in his memory where they belonged.

            Ral rolled up the sleeve of his shirt to display the winding, brightly-colored dragon tattoo on his forearm. This close up, Jace could see beneath it the kind of blotchy, shiny skin he was all too familiar with, like the places on his back that had never healed properly from Baltrice’s repeated assaults. “When I was ten years old, I called lightning for the first time,” Ral told him. “It really did not go very well. I couldn’t move my arm for days. And I almost killed another kid.”

            Biting the inside of his lip, Jace nodded.

            “It was _not_ easy to ever touch red mana again, let me tell you.” Ral ran a finger up and down his own arm. “I’m glad I did, but the first time after that was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, and I once put together a presentation for the Firemind in ten minutes and didn’t get eaten.”

            “Ral, I—I appreciate it, but I’m not you. I don’t have that kind of strength.” Best to be direct. Best to vocalize it, because the truth hurt, but not as much as letting either of them think he wasn’t— _broken, useless, shattered_ —a bit of a coward about some things.

            Snort. “Yeah, you do,” Ral told him. “I saw you run the Maze. But it’s up to you.”

            Jace frowned, irritated. “Fine, I’ll show you,” he said flatly, and, trying very hard not to think about where this was probably going, reached out and laid his hand over Ral’s gauntlet, and then he let the fire in.

            _It’s the easiest and the hardest at the same time, connecting to Baltrice. He can feel her hatred sizzling across his awareness, just on the edge of painful, but it’s a clean hatred. There’s nothing shameful there, nothing he has to tell himself he doesn’t have to be ashamed by. The pain doesn’t intrude; it’s just there, unpleasantly close, like sitting too near the fire for too long. The impersonal, unmoved Morning. The vision of the rising spires of New Prahv hurts worse than this does, although something inside Jace knows that his future is very full of red, fiery pain, up close and personal—_

He was clenching his teeth and shivering or maybe twitching. He could still feel the way the fire had roared across him, scorching his nerves until they were so raw with it they couldn’t feel the pain anymore. “See?” he gritted out to Ral.

            “Okay, firstly, you did it,” Ral told him implacably. “Secondly, uh…you know I really hate having people inside my head, right?”

            “Yeah, I got that when you threatened to electrocute me if I so much as picked up a stray thought.” The shivering had subsided enough that Jace was at least capable of a witty rejoinder.

            “Let me show you what it feels like to me,” Ral said recklessly, and Jace went still.

“What?” he asked stupidly.

            “Get in my head,” Ral told him. “And _I’ll_ draw the mana.”           

            Jace wanted to say no. Jace was pretty sure he _should_ say no. If he lost control while he was inside Ral’s head, he could really hurt or traumatize the other man. But Ral was looking at him impatiently, drumming his fingers on the table in a way that was either impatient or nervous—maybe both. But _offering_ Jace…this.

            “All right,” Jace said, all in one breath, and he gently opened Ral’s mind and looked inside.

            The red mana crackled again, a little more distant this time, as Jace held himself deliberately a little apart. It was surprisingly to him how easy it was for Ral to draw mana—even blue mana, which had been as natural to Jace as breathing, was a struggle, sometimes, now. Jace had forgotten how easy it could feel, if you were just opening yourself to let it in, no pressure, no demands, simply letting the mana well through the connection.

            He could sense, through Ral, the destructive power lurking at the heart of the red—the fire, the lightning, the roaring pyre that ate what it touched and left nothing but ash in its wake—but there was something else, as well. Warmth, beauty, life; the phoenix rising from those ashes; creation and destruction entwined like lovers. Like Morning and Evening. Like—

            Jace blinked, once, twice, looked over at Ral. Ral, who was Evening. Ral, who was leaning forward, just like Jace. They were so close he could feel Ral’s breath on his face, but Ral was holding back, hesitating slightly, and it meant that Jace got to be the one to close the final inch and bring their lips together.

~

            Vraska was still holding him, cautious, like he was made of eggshell and might break, even as her hair writhed above him, and her arms shook with suppressed anger. Jace pressed his forehead into hers and interlaced their fingers. “There’s a sedoretu there, isn’t there?” he said, quietly. “You and Ral—that’s Evening. Me and Lavinia—that’s Morning. You’d—well, I don’t know if you’d _like_ Lavinia, but I think you could work together. I’ve seen her and Ral. They’re—weirdly good together? Though I don’t think they’ve ever thought about making it a romantic thing.” Ral just hung around New Prahv when he was bored and annoyed Lavinia and occasionally stole coffee, which he claimed was better than any he could get hold of at Nivix. “I mean…I wouldn’t push it, of course. But—but it might—it might be there.”

            And she was carding her hand through his hair. “A _real_ sedoretu,” she agreed. “Not one that was made of necessity, or of cruelty. One that was _chosen_.”

            Jace nodded shakily. “Yeah.” He sniffed and wiped his eyes on the tattered remnants of his sleeve. “If we all—chose.” And he leaned forward and kissed her, very carefully, on the lips.           

~

            “Lavinia, are you in here?” Jace thought he was going crazy. He’d tried everywhere he could think of. Ral’s lab, Ral’s _other_ lab, the storage closet. No Ral. If it hadn’t been for Vraska at his elbow, Jace thought he would already have started crying with fear, after the way he’d left Ral the last time. Ral _would_ have gone to find Vraska, he was almost sure, and he’d have stumbled on Bolas, and then—and then—

            Finally, they’d stopped at Jace’s sanctum, in the hopes that Jace would be able to use something here to track him down, or at least, possibly, find Lavinia, whose help might be invaluable. Someone fumbled with the door to Jace’s bedroom, and there she was, peeking out. “Jace?” she said, in something like wonder. “Oh, Krokt. _Jace_.” She turned. “Ral!” she called. “Ral, he’s—he’s _here_.”

            “ _What_?” There was a crash from Jace’s bedroom, and then the Izzet mage himself was stumbling out. He paused for a moment, hand falling onto Lavinia’s shoulder, and Jace’s still-unsettled telepathy caught a fragmented glance of an extremely awkward and slightly confused kiss the two of them had shared just a few nights ago, not that they’d talked about it yet—and then Lavinia was giving Ral a little shove, and he was stumbling forward, and Jace was running forward as well. There was a table in the way, but Jace hardly paused as he shoved it aside with his telekinesis, the blue responding easily to his call, and he was in Ral’s arms, and their lips were crashing together.

            “I thought you were fucking _dead_ , you _bastard_ ,” Ral snarled, without actually pulling back, so it came out a little muffled.

            “I’m sorry,” Jace said urgently. “Baal, I’m so sorry. I—a lot happened, and then I lost my memory and I got stranded and—” His telekinesis was now trying to undo Ral’s shirt front, and he could hear Vraska snickering behind them.

            “Yeah, well, I nearly got eaten by _another_ dragon,” Ral complained. “I can’t believe you bailed on me for your ex.”

            “It wasn’t _for_ her.” Jace swallowed, and he was trembling. Vraska and Lavinia were closing in behind him and Ral. “It was because of Tezz—Tezzeret. Krokt, there’s a lot I need to—a lot I need to tell all of you.”

            “Hello,” Vraska said to Lavinia. “I’m not sure we’ve been formally introduced.”

            “Wait a minute—” And then Lavinia had a scroll out and was determinedly reading from it.

            “Wait!” Jace yelped. “Stop, Lavinia, I can explain—”

            “The last time I saw Vraska, she was trying to kill you and take over Ravnica,” Lavinia replied coolly. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t trust that she hasn’t enthralled you somehow.”

            “I mean, fair point,” Vraska grinned lazily. “Although it was mostly a misunderstanding.”

            “In fairness, I tried to kill him, too, the first time we met,” Ral put in.

            “Not. Helping,” Jace told him. “Look…what about a truth spell or something? Lavinia, I would _really_ rather you not go casting spells at Vraska. I, um, I was actually kind of hoping you two would get along. Um.”

            A guarded look passed between Ral and Vraska. “You kept him safe?” Ral asked.

            “You helped him feel mana again without it hurting.” Vraska gave Ral a sharp nod.

            “All right then.” Ral shrugged, then grinned. “This is unusual, but hardly bad. Lavinia, how would you feel about a sedoretu?”

            “How did you—” Jace blurted.

            “Oh, come on, Jace, you’re not exactly subtle. Four of us, two Morning, two Evening, and all the connections lining up perfectly except for Vinny here being a stick in the mud.”

            “I am _not_ a stick in the mud,” Lavinia protested. “And I—don’t know.” She eyed Vraska warily. “If it transpires that you did, in fact, keep Jace safe, then I am indebted to you. And _if_ that turns out to be the case, _and_ you’ve given up on your ambitions to unseat him as the Guildpact—well—you’re reasonably attractive.”

            “Well, thank you, darling,” Vraska said easily. “Truth spell it is, then.”

~

            A truth spell and three more or less awkward, secretive dates later—thank Krokt for Lavinia or they’d never have gotten away with any of them—and, somehow, it all fell into place. Jace kept expecting the other shoe to drop, but it didn’t. Ral and Vraska got on as if they’d known each other for years. Lavinia and Vraska were at daggers drawn for a while, but after a particularly intense discussion about the intricacies of ensuring that arresters didn’t abuse their power, Ral and Jace caught them making out in a corner. And Ral and Jace fell back into an easy rhythm that Jace had halfway thought he’d imagined.

            So it was only natural to take the next step. For all four of them to head up to Jace’s sanctum, occasionally bickering, laughing, or kissing, and for Jace to put up the most secretive wards he had, with the other three looking on and giving him a plethora of advice, some of which was useful, some of which was—less so.

            “I am not going to set it up to electrocute anyone who gets within fifty feet!” Jace told Ral.

            “Well, we wouldn’t be disturbed.”

            “I mean, not until the Boros showed up and tried to firebomb us to death.”

            “Ugh, you have no sense of class,” Ral sniffed, but he subsided. Lavinia produced four protection scrolls. And then they were pairing off—Vraska with Lavinia, first, and Jace with Ral. Jace had to take a few deep breaths to calm his racing heart.

            Ral frowned, looking awkwarder than usual. “Jace—not doubting your commitment here, but after what you told us—you’re absolutely sure, right? I mean, it’s not like I have to be the one to—”

            Jace took Ral’s hands in his. “This is _our_ sedoretu,” he said fiercely. “The first _real_ sedoretu I’ve ever been in. And I _will_ do this. So. Morning to your Evening, Ral.”

            Ral grinned lazily as he took Jace’s hand. “Evening to your Morning, then, Jace.” And they were kissing, Ral’s hands rubbing over Jace’s back, Jace’s hands in Ral’s hair. Beside them, Vraska made a pleased humming noise.

            “Lavinia?” she asked.

            “I’m prepared. Would you…?”

            “Evening to your Morning, Lavinia?”

            “Morning to your Evening, Vraska.”

            Ral’s red mana, carrying light and brightness and warmth, the thrumming pulse of the rumbling earth, twined up and around Jace, and with it, he drew blue as well. Jace only winced for a moment, and then he drew blue as well, and, to his surprise, it responded as easily and painlessly as it had during his innocent time on Ixalan. Cool and deep and open. Open for Ral, open for Vraska. Black and green and white and blue were drawing up nearby, beside Ral and Jace, where Vraska and Lavinia were locked in an embrace, sharing an open-mouthed kiss.

            Ral slid Jace’s cloak off, then, after a little fiddling, his trousers, pushing him insistently backwards towards the couch. They were kissing, red and blue mana flowing freely between them, and Jace was whining, hitching his hips against Ral. “I’ll get the lubricant,” Ral told him. “Hang on a sec.”

            After he returned, he knelt between Jace’s legs on the couch and stroked both hands over his inner thighs, then coated a finger with something slippery, leaned Jace back, and tried to push the finger in. Jace tensed instantly, trembling, clenching his fists to keep the memories from rising up. Ral paused, waiting. “Sorry,” Jace whispered miserably.

            “It’s data,” Ral fired back. “Don’t apologize for data. Idiot. Hmmm.” He bent his hip and mouthed up Jace’s inner thigh, and Jace’s wilting erection hardened again. “That’s better,” Ral said with satisfaction. “Will you be okay if you lie back?”

            “I—I think so?”

            “Actually—if that’s a problem, why don’t you get on your hands and knees?”

            After thinking about this for a moment, Jace complied. “What are you going to— _fuck_. _Ral._ ” That was definitely not a finger. Jace whined as Ral’s tongue danced around the outside of his entrance; after a moment, his wobbly arms gave out and he was face-first in the pillows as Ral’s tongue continued to flicker and circle. “Okay?” Ral pulled back to ask, and Jace responded with a broken moan that he managed to turn, after a minute, into, “Yes—Baal—don’t _stop_ , Ral, _please_.”

            “Hit me if you don’t like it,” Ral said, and then he dived back in. Jace squealed and gasped as Ral moved from licking around the outside to actually push his tongue _in_. Heat prickled through Jace’s stomach and his cock, and he gave a dry sob into the bed, vaguely realizing he was on his stomach now and trying to hump the blankets.

            By the time Ral gently tried a finger again, Jace was practically incoherent and one finger, then two, slid in with no resistance. “Ral,” Jace moaned.

            “Okay, you still want me—”

            “Krokt’s sake, I want you inside me _yesterday_ ,” Jace groaned.

            “Right, well, up you get then.”

            “Hmmnuh?”

            “I want you riding my cock, Jace, dammit, and I would like you to be doing it sooner rather than later.”

            Dizzily, Jace peeled himself off the bed, really unsure as to whether he’d already come once or not. Ral kept a hand underneath his shoulder as he helped Jace into his lap, and Jace took a moment to stare at Ral, at the red speckled flush across his chest, the way his eyes were shining desperately, and the corona of mana rising around him, and he nearly fell over trying to angle himself correctly. Ral laughed and kissed the center of his palm. “Come on, then, Guildpact,” he grinned. “Show the Izzet your authority.”

            “Shut up,” Jace mumbled, sinking down. Opened up and pliant, it barely stung at all, and Ral muttered something long and remarkably obscene, turning his head and kissing the inside of Jace’s elbow. Jace waited a moment to let himself adjust, and then he took a deep, shuddering breath, pulled up, and sank down again. Ral gave a long, strangled groan. “Tanit, _Jace_ , you’re— _hnnnf._ ” Pleased at the result, Jace did it again, and this time Ral’s cock brushed something inside him that sent exquisite pleasure sparking through all of him. Jace gasped and set about rocking in earnest; Ral’s hands scrabbled at his back for dear life.

            Red and blue, lightning and sweat. Ral’s hips bucked up to meet Jace’s, once, twice, three-four-five—and his long-fingered hands were tightening around Jace’s hips as he climaxed. Shakily, Jace started to peel himself away. “Oh, no, you don’t,” Ral told him, and slid a hand between them, giving Jace a few quick, skillful jerks, and Jace yelled his name and came all over his hand.

            They lay in a tangle of limbs and panted, listening to Vraska’s loud moans and whimpers, and the occasional short curse in Lavinia’s precise tones. “That was _really_ good,” Jace said shakily after a minute.

            “Glad I pass muster.” Ral’s sarcasm was belied when he dropped a gentle kiss on Jace’s head. There was a squeal from the bed, and a few moments later, Vraska and Lavinia, both just as naked as Ral and Jace—and when _had_ Ral gotten all his clothes off, Jace wondered blearily—padded over, looking very pleased with themselves.

            “Swap?” Vraska grinned, holding out a hand to Ral.

            “You don’t think we’d better wait till Jace and I can get it up again?” Ral raised an eyebrow at her.

            “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that.” Vraska winked, and Jace felt a sudden surge of green mana, and then—oh. _Oh_.

            “You have _got_ to show me that trick,” Ral said admiringly.

            “Will do. Another time, lightning boy.”

            Ral took her hand, and she pulled him to his feet, pushed him towards Lavinia, and took his place on the bed beside Jace. Jace leaned towards her, and she met him in the middle for rough, thorough kiss. Her hair stroked through his, and Jace melted into her arms, pressing himself into her breasts. “You’re amazing,” he told her.

            “Thank you.” She kissed his nose, then both eyelids. “You are, too, Jace. Mot, I’ve never met anyone I admired as much.” She put her hands on his shoulders and pulled him down on top of her, and somehow, he ended up with a face between her breasts, licking a stripe up her sternum. When he came to the top, he paused, propping himself up on his hands, and grinning at her. “So how do you want to do this?”

            “I’m just saying, you could pause and savor the moment a little!” came from the bed.

            “And _I’m_ just saying, there would be less painful hip-bumping if you would pick a rhythm and _stick_ to it!”

            Jace and Vraska paused in the middle of the negotiations to laugh into each other’s mouths. “If you were my crew, I’d tell you to work out your problems or take fifty lashes,” Vraska called over at the other couple. Her distraction gave Jace the perfect opportunity to flip them and set his hands on her hips as she found herself straddling him.

            “You would not,” he murmured with a smile.

            “Oh, I’d say it,” Vraska replied coolly. “Jace—are you sure you want to be on your back—”

            “For Krokt’s sake, Lavinia, we’re not trying to conduct _drills_ over here!” Ral whined, but it was a breathless whine.

            “We’re really getting outpaced here,” Jace told her. “I’ll be fine. Stop worrying.”

            “Forgive me for having _lived_ your past with you,” Vraska told him. “Yes, all right, all right, but I don’t think any of the three of us are actually going to _stop_ worrying about you.”

            “Well, how about you stop bringing my past into somewhere it has no place?” Jace asked, and he put his hands on her shoulders and tugged her down to kiss him on the lips. “This _isn’t_ the past. This is now. And honestly, if I could handle Ral being—” he flushed, warmth rising to his cheeks, “—um, inside me, I’m pretty sure I can handle you being on top.”

            “Fine.” Vraska grinned at him. “Don’t blame me if you end up with a broken pelvis.”

            Then, belying the threat, she rubbed her whole body slowly and gently across his. Jace shuddered, eyes rolling up in his head, clutching at her back and stroking his hands up and down. Vraska dipped her head, and he felt her mouth moving down the side of his throat. “Please,” Jace gasped. “ _Please_. There’s no way I’m going to—to last—”

            “Shame,” she murmured throatily. “Maybe another time.” He felt her hand around his erection, felt her wet heat against it, then around it, and he arced up into her. She gasped and bucked back against him, and there followed several minutes worth of desperate thrusting and more moaning on Jace’s part, as Vraska rocked on him. She leaned forward, kissing him again, and it was the touch of her lips, more than anything else, that pulled him over the edge again with a shout, slipping uncomplainingly into a world of green and black.

            When he surfaced again, she was lying pressed into his side. “Evening to your Morning, Jace,” she murmured, and he slid a hand over her shoulder and pulled her closer still.

            “Morning to your Evening, Vraska.”

~

            When Bolas, inevitably, arrived on Ravnica, all four of them rose together to fight the dragon.

            _This_ was what a sedoretu was supposed to feel like, a joyful tapestry, not a forced connection born of fear. Ral was on Jace’s left, Vraska on his right, and Lavinia across from him, mana flowing freely through the connections between them, twining around Jace and filling him up till he overflowed. But when he did, the mana simply spilled out to someone else; it didn’t build up and build up painfully until it broke out. There was no pressure; even the sense of urgency was muted a little beneath their merged determination.

            Lavinia’s Morning balanced Jace’s own, their dark Evenings beside them, weighting them down so they didn’t float away, while they keep the Evenings from sinking too far. The bright _white_ from Lavinia still pinched at Jace a little, but there was black pouring in fromVraska, and it was twined round green, lessening the corrosion, and the black and white hit one another, light and shadow, chiaroscuro, and that lessened the pain, as well. And the red from Ral, shadowed and deepened by his Evening, didn’t hurt at all. It was just warm.

            There was still a pitched battle. Bolas was still a ridiculously ancient elder dragon. But the Gatewatch was there to help—even Liliana. And if they didn’t have a proper sedoretu yet, Jace thought, watching the way Chandra and Nissa moved in tandem, they were getting there. So that was one and half, really. Liliana gave him a strange smile as they passed one another, but Jace didn’t smile back. If she’d changed, well—that was a question for him to handle later. For now, he’d barely discovered his anger with her. He wasn’t ready to let it go. He smiled at Gideon, though, clasping hands with him and Nissa almost as if they _had_ been lovers, even though they were all three Morning, and that would have been all kinds of wrong. Chandra clapped him on the back. “Glad to see you’re all right,” she told him.

            “Yeah, you too,” Jace told her, and then all of them went to face the dragon. The Gatewatch did help, but it was Jace, Ral, Vraska, and Lavinia who wove the five-colored net of mana to trap the dragon in, Jace pulling together their minds and weaving together the five colors, letting them run through him, while Vraska held him, keeping him safe from all the attackers, while Ral tempered the pain that Jace ought to have felt, filtering it through himself instead, while Lavinia steadied and kept steady the Morning-Evening push-pull.

            As the shimmering field surrounded the shrieking dragon, as the Eternities reached out, forming a bubble that not even Nicol Bolas would be able to break from the inside, the four of them turned to the metal-boned figure gawping up at them.

            “ _This_ is a real sedoretu, Tezzeret.” Jace could feel the power fizzing beneath his skin, could feel the anger and ferocious joy of the other three at his back. He let the five colors of mana well up inside him, waited for Lavinia to say, _Shouldn’t we take him into custody for a trial?_ and then, when she didn’t, when all of them were simply united in one purpose, he let the welling mana out through him and watched as the five-colored arc—actually visible like the stroke of some gravity-defying paintbrush—twist through the air and hit Tezzeret full in the chest. The artificer screamed. “Can _you_ hold this much mana?” Jace asked him, voice reverberating thunderously. “Is this _enough_ mana for you? Is this _enough_? Shall I draw some more?”

            More and more and more. It swept around them in a torrential whirlwind, and Jace heard Ral laughing like a maniac at his side. It _was_ pretty much a huge thunderstorm made of mana. Tezzeret’s screaming hollowed out, lost in the shrieking of the wind as the mana boiled up and up.

            As it began to die down, and the sedoretu slowly became earthbound once again, Jace stumbled slightly; three pairs of arms at his back immediately caught him. “You all right?” Ral murmured his ear. “Careful,” Lavinia told him. Vraska squeezed his hand, hard, and then spoke lazily. “Well, well, well. Best served cold, indeed.” She extended her hand, and Jace followed her pointing finger with his gaze.

            The mana had melted the etherium, which was dripping down the blackened outline that was all that was left of Tezzeret. Smirking, Vraska stepped forward and blew on it, and it simply flaked away in the wind of her breath. Jace stared at the ash that hung in the air for a moment before dissipating and let out a long breath. “He’s gone,” he said, quietly. “He’s really _gone_ this time. And—and we—we—”

            “Good job, Guildpact,” Ral said roughly, coming up behind him and sliding his arms across Jace’s chest. “You saved Ravnica.” He kissed the hollow of Jace’s chin. “I think I need to sleep for a week. Either that or I need to drink a ton of coffee.”

            “I’ll make you some,” Lavinia put in amusedly. “Although I think all of us would benefit from a little rest.”

            “Coffee _and_ sleep,” Jace suggested recklessly. He turned his head to kiss Ral back, then turned to the other side and kissed Vraska. Lavinia moved in across from him and they were locked in a four-armed, five-colored embrace. “Thank you,” Jace said. “All of you. Thank you so much.” And then, because he realized he’d never actually said it—not to them, not to anyone—“I love you.”

            “Yeah,” Ral agreed. “Me, too. All of you.”

            “We all do, I think,” Lavinia said, tentatively, and Vraska nodded firmly.

            “I love you,” Jace said again, and the mana welled up inside of him, not painful anymore. Not painful at all.

**Author's Note:**

> Ral's backstory partly inspired by Rastaban's lovely fic Spark and accompanying discussions.


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